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MONTREAL - Expectations have been notably muted in the leadup to the summit on higher education that will run from this coming Monday morning to Tuesday noon.

The principal of McGill University, Heather Munroe-Blum, has gone on record saying that it is shaping up as a farce. The province’s largest student group, the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSE), has written it off altogether and is boycotting the event.

There are doubts that much of significance can be accomplished in the mere day and a half set aside for the meeting, and there have been complaints that the government only came up with a detailed agenda for the event late this week. Some worried that the government had already decided what the conclusions would be before the first word is uttered, and others that it would involve so many people with such divergent interests that it is impossible to reach a constructive consensus.

But there will be a summit, and despite any inherent flaws in the process, it is incumbent on the participants to give it their best possible effort, in the interest of the province’s higher education system and in the interest of Quebec society as a whole.

This will require open mindedness and concessions to higher interests from all parties involved.

It will mean that the Parti Québécois government, which before taking office tried to milk the protest movement against the previous Liberal government’s proposed tuition hikes for political advantage, will have to admit that the Liberals were not without reason in expecting a greater contribution from students to university funding.

In fact, it has done so already in taking the position that fees must increase, if only by indexation, and by suggesting that increased parental contributions to tuition should be considered.

It must also acknowledge that Quebec universities are underfunded compared with universities in the rest of Canada, and that this is in large part due to a shortfall in revenue from tuition. It is something the government has sought to deny, but the latest available figures from Canada’s 25 largest universities for 2009-10, compiled by the Canadian Association of University Business Officers, show operating revenue per student was $20,083 in universities in the rest of Canada, compared with $16,047 for Quebec schools.

The student associations, which have been holding out for a total tuition freeze leading to eventual abolition of fees, will have to realize that they are being shortchanged in the quality of education they receive because of their failure to contribute more to financing it. Underfunded Quebec universities spend 14 per cent less on teaching and non-sponsored research than ROC schools, and roughly half on student services.

University administrators, meanwhile, will have to concede that there is some merit to arguments that they could be spending what money they do have more smartly. Excess bureaucracy is a congenital Quebec condition from which universities are apparently not immune. Overall, Quebec universities spend considerably more on average on central administration than those in the rest of the country, and of the six Canadian universities that recorded the highest percentage of bureaucratic spending, four were from Quebec. For a more complete comparative picture, see W. D. Smith’s analysis on the Friday Opinion page of The Gazette (http://goo.gl/poqNF).

What all parties must keep foremost in mind is that high-performance universities are critical to Quebec’s economic development, the vitality of its culture and to meeting the looming challenges of an aging population and a staggering public debt. Because of its limited numbers, Quebec society’s prosperity is particularly reliant on the quality of its universities.

That these considerations will be foremost in the minds of all summit participants is perhaps a lot to hope for. But it is the only hope there is for a productive outcome.

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